Thursday, December 29, 2011

Lights Out 2011: Signs We Lost This Year

They get harder and harder to find each year, these old neon signs of New York. Their disappearance is what prompted me to undertake this project five years ago. Here's a look at some we lost in 2011. (I have included a few that disappeared in the latter months of 2010.)

About 50 of the signs I've photographed for this project have disappeared since September 2006. More vanished in the same period before I could get to them. In the coming weeks I hope to add a complete gallery of "los desaparecidos" over at nyneon.org. I'll mark that occasion with a post here as well. Meantime, enjoy these photos of this year's casualties. In most cases, photos are all that's left.

Faber's Arcade, 1230 Surf Ave., Coney Island, Brooklyn

Silverescent Neon Sign Co., c. 1948

Lost courtesy of Thor Equities along with the historic Henderson Music Hall over the winter of 2010-2011. (Neon tubes that outlined the letters vanished years ago.)

Surf Hotel, 1230 Surf Ave., Coney Island, Brooklyn

1997 (Prop for Spike Lee's "He Got Game")

Lost courtesy of Thor Equities along with the historic Henderson Music Hall over the winter of 2010-2011. Please tell me this found a good home. (Thanks to Amusing the Zillion for origins of this sign.)

696 Gourmet Deli, 696 Third Ave., Manhattan

c. 1965

Hadn't worked in years. Tubes removed and sheet metal apparently covered over with new sign faces.

Morscher's Pork Store, 5844 Catalpa Ave., Ridgewood, Queens

c. 1950

Replaced with a new sign (LED?) that more or less imitates the original, but without the panache of its veteran predecessor.

Jade Mountain Restaurant, 197 Second Ave., Manhattan

1954 (raceway sign); Laster Neon Engineering Co., 1960 (projecting)

The restaurant closed down back in 2006, but the signs hung in there until this past summer, when they finally vanished amid many a hue and cry.

Tout Va Bien Restaurant, 311 West 51st St., Manhattan

Midtown Neon, c. 1955

Replaced with a new sign for this old restaurant sometime around Thanksgiving 2011. The restaurant, fortunately, is alive and well.

McSwiggan's Bar, 393 Second Ave., Manhattan

1956

Taken down for repair or replacement, fate yet to be determined. DOB records indicate this went up along with a long-vanished fascia sign for an establishment known as Mullin & Swain's in 1956.

Mayfair Chemists, 21 Seventh Ave., Manhattan

c. 1965

Old independent drug store closed some years ago. Sign finally disappeared with expansion of neighboring Duane Reade this past fall.

Milford Plaza Hotel, 700 Eighth Ave., Manhattan (roof sign)

Artkraft Strauss Sign Corp., 1958

Taken down around October, 2011, amid reports a new sign is in the works.

5 comments:

It's not generally known outside of Coney Island, but the Surf Hotel neon sign on the Henderson Building (1899) was not original. It was a prop for the 1997 Spike Lee movie "He Got Game" and was left there. Still it is a very nice sign and the demo men were offering it for sale, along with the original painted sign shown in my post, to various people. So I would say, yes it very likely found a home.

The loss of the Faber's Fascination sign still upsets me. It should have been saved by Thor Equities and made a part of the new Coney Island, the way the developer Durst saved and donated the Peep-O-Rama sign to the Times Square Alliance.

ATZ: Wow, thanks for the tip! On the main page at nyneon.org, I had remarked of the Surf Hotel sign: "So perfect I wondered if it was the real thing or something left over from a film shoot." http://www.nyneon.org/Transport-15.htm

ABOUT

New York Neon is a new book released by W.W. Norton that presents a documentary homage to old neon signs in New York. The primary motivation for this project is to record the significance of these signs as works of design that characterized New York's 20th century streetscapes. This blog will feature occasional news items related to New York's dwindling number of old neon signs, as well as sundry "cutting room floor" items that didn't make it into the book.